Wordslinger

Thanks for the pics! The terms seem awfully vague sometimes. It's nice to have reference pictures of them!

My Palm VII goes everywhere with me. I have a zippered neoprene case for it, but the poor thing has been dropped and stuffed in my purse and so forth -- as long as you don't sit on them or step on them, they are pretty durable. I did drop my Magellan GPS on the sidewalk the other day (tripped because I was watching the GPS and not the sidewalk), but it survived just fine. Come to think of it, I've dropped about everything except the laptop. At any rate, they're making them sturdy these days. I wouldn't worry about the Palm (put it in one of those nice cases and that'll help protect from shock)

By the way, folks, this also comes up with another sensitive issue... petroglyphs and other rock art. While it would be valuable to enthusiasts (such as myself) and archaeologists to have good locations for them, it would encourage vandalism. So this could be quite an important issue, here. I'm going to volunteer my services with a rock art group to help get good coordinates for some of this art (important for preservation.) But I can see that publishing the data on Internet is dangerous.

...and my digital cameras. Did I mention that I usually carry along one or more digital cameras?

I'm an electronics junkie and often wander aboard with my Palm VII (wireless), laptop, DVD player, CD player, and assorted recorders including a digital one. I just show off my toys to the guys at the security checkpoint (run them through the xray machine first... it doesn't hurt them) and nobody seems to have a problem with them. Will do the same with "Ferd", my new Magellan. Part of the reason I wanted it is those uploadable street maps!!!

...wif all da goodies... as soon as Amazon ships my darn map software. My very first GPS, and I don't know anyone else who owns one. So I'm off on a Strange Adventure, here.

I love caves -- and would have never thought to do a cache in one. It's kind of dangerous in the non-commercial caves and you can so easily damage formations by careless climbing. Perhaps a nice medium... like a cache only at the entrance of a cave that's basically a logbook of the visits? And available only on a fairly exclusive basis with the cave owner's permission? I can see that approaching a cave owner (perhaps through the association), explaining the cache process, and working together might be of mutual benefit. A brochure could be left at the visitors' desk explaining that there is a cache around and explaing a bit about geocaching (perhaps have a "beginner's" cache and a more advanced cache that would require permission)... and, of course, the cave owners get their sites listed on a geocaching database. I think it could work. (g) I volunteer to do Cave Without A Name here in Texas (we just LOVED that cave!!!)

Yep! It does. You have to go to the Menu and then to Weather. I love the sun and moon position.

Santa brought me a new Magellan Platinum GPS for Christmas (Santa really, really, really loves me.) I decided to start with benchmarking because it seemed easier. I think this was a mistake. I found one with the help of my husband, but the others I tried have been elusive. I did stumble across a surveyor's mark and logged that, but so far I'm one for three on the benchmarks. For those of you who do benchmarking, do you use the written instructions more than the GPS coordinates (in other words, are our GPS units more accurate than old surveying techniques?) Should we bother sending the correct (to the minute and fractions of seconds) setting to National? Is there some way we can calibrate the unit to check and see if it's giving us an accurate reading? Yeah, I know that the unit SHOULD be accurate, but ... oh, heck. I'm an engineer type and I'd like to know. Halp?